From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Before Vancouver settled on its current City Hall on West 12th, it had been housed in a number of really interesting buildings.
The first council started out in a tent shortly after the Great Fire wiped out most of the city in 1886. The tent was on the CPR pier at the foot of Main Street. Chief Constable John Stewart is pictured second from left.
Three months later, the Sentell Brothers were contracted to build the first city hall at 149-151 Powell Street–a two-storey wooden structure. It took just a month to build and came in at under $1,300. But the city couldn’t afford the tab, and the Sentell Brothers took the unusual step of shutting them out until they came up with the cash.
Oppenheimer Bros Wholesale Grocers building 1898
The building quickly became too small for the growing city, and when David Oppenheimer was elected mayor in 1888, City Hall into his warehouse on Powell and Columbia. The building is remarkably still there, in a sketchy part of Gastown, rehabilitated and now owned by rock star Bryan Adams.
Oppenheimer was replaced by Frederick Cope as Mayor in 1892 and City Hall moved to the old Market Hall on Main Street (Westminster Avenue until 1910) in 1898 just south of the Carnegie Library at East Hastings and remained there for the next three decades. The building with its wonderful turrets was demolished in 1958.
In 1929 City Hall moved to the Holden Block at 16 East Hastings designed in 1911 by William T. Whiteway—the same architect who designed the Sun Tower and Kathryn Maynard’s Alexander Street brothel.
Since 1937 our art deco City Hall designed by Fred Townley has stayed at its current location on West 12th. You can thank (or blame) Mayor Gerry McGeer for the look and the location, the first time a major Canadian city had built its city hall outside of the city.
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When Adams bought the brick building at the corner of Powell and Columbia Streets in 1991 it was abandoned and abused. Likely it would have gone the way of other historical Gastown buildings if he hadn’t seen its potential.